


Red-ness

by foxtwin



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Blood, Coming of Age, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Misunderstanding, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-09
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxtwin/pseuds/foxtwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Red is a magical, ominous, voluptuous, torturous, maniacal, cynical, dangerous color. It has power. It breeds fear. It portends danger and darkness and death.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Red-ness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amo_amare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amo_amare/gifts).



I hate my mother. Really. She’s a bitch.

Three winters ago, when I was ten, I went to Mass and said a prayer to St. Nicholas asking him to request a green shawl from the Christ Child, hoping that the Christ Child would present the shawl at Christmas through him. My prayer was sincere -- and still is.

What I received, however, was a red riding coat. Red. Not green. And it was from my mother, not the Christ Child or St. Nicholas. That green shawl has yet to appear, but I continue to hold out hope.

My disappointment -- my raw disappointment -- found a way from creeping out of my mouth and went straight to action. Hope for a green shawl lingered. Hope in the promise of “all good gifts” that come from Heaven lingered. But that calloused disappointment -- the one that has scabbed over the other raw disappointments, transforming them into false joy -- must have shown on my face, for I smiled and thanked my mother for the gift.

As all mothers will, she then encouraged me to try it on to see whether it fit. I hesitated, but did as she asked.

I wouldn’t wear it to Mass the following Sunday. Indeed, I refused it with an excuse that the winds were not all that cold for a coat. My mother, however, chose then to shove me outside in the morning’s chill until I begged her to let me back in. And when she did, she also boxed my ears. The day’s events forced the nasty thing upon my person, and I can tell you that my ears matched my coat shade for shade.

My attempts to rid myself of the red riding coat took many forms over the course of days and weeks. I once thought to store it away with the rubbish, making sure to get egg and grease all over the nasty coat. That should make the coat unusable, I thought. But, oh, was I wrong. Indeed, my mother’s keen eyes and firm demeanor not only discovered the coat. She forced me to scrub the egg and grease out of the coat until my arms and fingers were numb. This took weeks that turned into months. One spot of grease never came out, despite all.

Why green? Why not thank mother for her generosity and give up the color feud forever? I’ve always been a watcher of women. A watcher of men. And as any true watcher knows, it is the watching that fascinates more than the activity one watches. Green blends with nature, is at home with the earth, and enjoys subtlety. Green allows one to blend into the scenery of the pasture, the hay in the loft, the leaves of trees. Hardly anyone notices you, and that means you can watch...and learn. Green infuses a sleepiness, a luxurious beauty formed by earth itself. It is a divine color, the opposite, in fact, of red.

It wasn’t really until my twelfth year that my deepest longing for that green shawl -- and a pure detestation for my mother -- manifested itself. That year, I passed from maidenhood to womanhood. When it happened, my mother and I wept -- but for different reasons. She wept for joy; I wept for sorrow. My childhood, my youth, had vanished the instant the blood came from me. Red blood, thick and powerful, the harbinger of childbearing. Marriage would soon be on my mother’s mind. It was then I recognized something my mother had known, but had not shared. Red is a magical, ominous, voluptuous, torturous, maniacal, cynical, dangerous color. It has power. It breeds fear. It portends danger and darkness and death. Men like the way red goes with black -- blood and night. Women like the way red goes with black -- a silk ribbon through ebony hair. For men, it recalls blood on the silvery sword in battle; for women, it recalls stains on linen sheets. If my time of blood had come, death had come as well. Death of my youth. Death of my dreams. My mother did not see this, blinded by her image of what she wanted -- not her image of what I truly was. So I indulged her to spite her.

I wore my red coat every Sunday to Mass, praying each time secretly for a green one. I wore my red coat every school day to lessons, praying silently along the way that someone would rob me and steal it. I longed for life, for mercy, for green each day -- and was granted death, blood, and red. So often did I wear that coat, many knew me not by my true name but by the color of that singular coat. A name I was only too glad to hide behind. Red.

The irony of it all was delicious enough to eat. They called me “Red,” and so that is what I became to them. It was that fateful day in late December of my twelfth year, delivering a basket of cheeses and wine to my grandmother, God rest her soul. Snow had yet to fall, but my red coat kept me as warm as any would have. The trees were beautiful, especially the ones that always keep their green life-force for all to see. Imagine my surprise in meeting a wolf -- not much more than a dog, really -- along the path. In its mouth was a squirrel it had caught, black and dripping with blood. It dropped the animal at my feet, as if I should accept the gift.

I tried to explain that I was grateful, but told that wolf my intent to visit grandmother. Oddly enough, the wolf stood there grinning and let me pass without anything more. When I finally got to grandmother’s place, I found this same wolf lounging on grandmother’s bed. I reasoned that grandmother must have left the door unlocked when she had gone out on some fool’s errand, as it was foolish of her to run any errand in mid-winter and leave a door unlocked. The wolf had naturally made itself comfortable in the warm house. How it had managed to get into her house, let alone get ahead of me, I am sure I don’t know. But it was the same wolf, no mistaking it. The wolf’s grin told me the truth of it. Its large eyes, nose, and teeth -- the teeth especially -- made my flesh crawl. The squirrel’s blood had caked a thin layer on the underside of its left lip.

Thinking it must have already eaten, I realized too late that the wolf had done no such thing. I sought to explain to the wolf at that moment that I had cheese and wine, but the wolf wanted none of that. What it wanted was me. It smelled me. And worse...it smelled my blood.

True to form, grandmother walked through the door just as the wolf was about to pounce on me. My grandmother leapt in front of the wolf as he was coming down. She suffered bites on her arms and legs and face. My screams were shrill enough to call neighbors -- one of them a hunter -- who shot the wolf dead. The huntsman, with his rifle. Redness oozed out of the wolf, onto its gray-brown coat, onto the wooden floor of grandmother’s house. Grandmother's blood mixed with it.

I took off my red coat, and laid it over the wolf’s dead body. He deserved it. It was a coat of death. And it fit him. Perfectly.

Grandmother never recovered. The hunter and I buried the coat and the wolf in a shallow grave in the forest. I said a prayer for the wolf, though I doubt the creature had a mortal soul. I said a prayer for grandmother, too, as her wounds were grave. I reasoned that perhaps the cheese and wine would help heal both the physical and emotional scars she endured to save me, but the wolf's avarice for blood had accomplished its intent.

I stayed at grandmother’s for about a week, tending to her wounds, burying her body, before venturing home again for the Sunday Christmas. I had no coat or shawl -- and the air was frightfully chilled. Upon seeing me blue and pale, my mother brought me hot savory tea and set me in front of the fire. She laid in my hand a Christmas package, and bid me open it up. I tore into the package, curious and hopeful.

A new red coat -- a larger one with satin and lace -- lay inside.

I cried.


End file.
